The War of the Worlds

Classics for Your Collection: goo.gl/U80LCr --------- Teaser Synopsis: Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. - H. G. Wells (1898), The War of the Worlds Summary: The War of the Worlds is a story about an alien invasion. It is told by a narrator who lived through it and tells you how it went down. The narrative opens in an astronomical observatory at Ottershaw where explosions are seen on the surface of the planet Mars, creating much interest in the scientific community. Later a "meteor" lands on Horsell Common, near the unnamed narrator's home in Woking, Surrey. He is among the first to discover that the object is an artificial cylinder that opens, disgorging Martians who are "big" and "greyish" with "oily brown skin," "the size, perhaps, of a bear," each with "two large dark-coloured eyes," and lipless "V-shaped mouths" which drip saliva and are surrounded by two "Gorgon groups of tentacles." They briefly emerge, have difficulty in coping with the Earth's atmosphere, and rapidly retreat into their cylinder. A human deputation (which includes the astronomer Ogilvy) approaches the cylinder with a white flag, but the Martians incinerate them and others nearby with a heat-ray before beginning to assemble their machinery. Then...we are on the verge of getting wiped out. Things are looking pretty dire for England (and the rest of the world by extension), when all of a sudden hope dawns from the tiniest and most unexpected of places The War of The Worlds is often thrilling, skillfully structured and narrated with some unexpected moments of philosophising and surreal dialogue. H.G. Wells was light years ahead of his time, the mind boggles to think what he was able to conceive in the 19th century; alien invasion, time travel, genetic engineering, all these when TV sets are still decades in the future. If historical importance is not much of an inducement for you and you are just looking for a thumping good read Mr. Wells is also at your service here. War of the Worlds is a 2005 American science fiction disaster film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Josh Friedman and David Koepp, loosely based on the novel of the same title by H. G. Wells. Scroll Up and Get Your Copy